“I felt sick all of a sudden, after the top of the Stelvio [78.5 kilometres to race], when we hit the downhill, that’s when the problem occurred,” Dumoulin added.

“The cause? I don’t know, it could be the combination of the altitude and eating more gels than normal because you can’t eat bars on a climb like this.”

His only team-mate Laurens Ten Dam, who had been in the escape earlier, waited and paced him as far as possible.

“I hadn’t seen him since the Mortirolo and then when I came back into the group, it was not a normal Tom that I saw,” Ten Dam said. “I said, ‘what is going on?’ He said, ‘hey I need to s**t, I have some problems in my stomach.’

“We had to find the right moment to stop and get rid of the stuff. Once he got rid of it, he found his legs because he was in my wheel yelling, ‘Go faster, faster, faster’,” Ten Dam continued.

“I was really tired from jumping on the Mortirolo and fighting on the Stelvio so I couldn’t help him as much as I wanted.”

What remains of the peloton climbs the Umbrail Pass on stage 16 of the Giro d’Italia (Sunada)

Dumoulin appeared unusually tired and drained in Bormio when he spoke with the press.

He can now recover before the race continues with its 17th stage to Canazei. In his favour, the stage ends with a gradual summit finish to 1,442 metres. However, he faces several 2000-metre-plus climbs on Thursday in the Dolomites.

“It’s really, really disappointing. It was really not necessary,” he added. “I only lost two minutes in 33 kilometres chasing alone all the time, so I definitely had the legs to follow Quintana and Nibali.”

He said that he should not pay from his solo chase effort to keep Quintana close.

“I think everyone was full-gas from that moment on, I wasn’t more full-gas than Nibali or Quintana was. I have to fight all the way to Milan. Do I have another option?!”